Still Waters (17 page)

The evening couldn’t be more perfect,
Hannah thought later that night, as she leaned back on the blanket and stretched her feet out toward the water. Across from her, Colin popped an olive into his mouth and smiled. Fixing the truck must have relaxed him. He looked almost like his old self, just like she’d hoped. Hannah lifted her face to the night breeze. The humidity of the day had blown away as the sun set, and now the air was fresh with the faintest hint of a chill, as if autumn was coming two months early. Colin would be leaving so soon. A melancholy pang struck Hannah’s throat. She reached out across the blanket and took his hand. “What am I going to do senior year without you?” she said.

Colin shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Suffer?” He grinned.

Hannah laughed—the first time she’d laughed since the storm, she realized. “I will,” she said. “You want some cherries?” She extended the bowl toward Colin.

“Sure.” He reached over and grabbed a dark red one. “Come here.” He extended the cherry toward her, and she leaned over obligingly and opened her mouth, biting down and squirting red cherry juice on his white T-shirt.

“Hey!” Colin laughed, brushing at himself. “Direct hit.”

“It looks like you’ve murdered someone.” Hannah laughed and stretched on her back on the blanket, staring up at the night sky, black now, and studded with thousands of diamond-bright stars. He seemed fine. Maybe the spell was broken. Maybe whatever was wrong with him was just like a bad dream that was over. She’d woken up and the old Colin was back.

Hannah wriggled over until she collided with her boyfriend on the other side of the blanket. He was stretched out on his back also, and she rolled on top of him so they were lying face to face. He smiled, his eyes closed, and put his arms around her. She studied his beautiful, familiar face, tracing his golden eyebrows with the tip of her fingers. “Colin,” she said softly.

He smiled, his eyes still closed and pulled her closer. “Hmm,” he said.

“I’ll really miss you.” She leaned down and pressed her lips to his. “I—” She choked on the words, fighting with herself. This had to be it. There weren’t that many moments left until he went away. But it was hard to get the words out. It was so revealing. It made her so vulnerable. Hannah jumped up abruptly, walking to the edge of the water.

Behind her, she could tell Colin was watching her, waiting. She glanced around for some sort of distraction, anything. Her
eye fell on the rowboat drawn up a few yards away. On impulse, she went over to it, her feet crushing the reeds beneath, and peered inside where the two oars lay across the bottom.

“Hey, we should take this thing out. I can’t believe we’ve been here all this time and never gone for a row.” She moved around to the back and gave the boat an experimental push, to see if it would move out from the shore. To her surprise, it moved almost immediately, instead of being mired in a decade’s worth of mud like she expected.

“Check this out!” Hannah called.

Colin was sitting on the blanket, but she couldn’t see him very well. His form was just a dark bulk on the sand. He said something she didn’t catch.

“What?” She could see him stand up and move toward her.

“I said I hate boats.” His voice sounded strained.

Hannah gave the boat another push and waded a foot or so into the water. The boat was floating now. “You hate boats, you hate swimming. What’s the deal with you and water, Colin?”

He was walking toward her more rapidly now.

“Stop it, Hannah,” he said. His voice was strained. “Don’t touch it.”

A feeling of rebellion rose up in Hannah’s chest. Her face grew unexpectedly hot. “You know, Colin, you’ve been acting really strange all day,” she said, still leaning down with both hands on the boat. “I’m getting kind of sick of it, to tell you the truth. We were having a nice time, and now you’re ruining it.” She could hear his footsteps crunching on the sand, closer
behind her. The footsteps stopped. Hannah whirled around.

Colin stood in front of her, his eyes fixed on the boat. His face was ashen. The dark circles stood out under his eyes as if crayoned there. Then his hands flew up and gripped the sides of his head with both hands, squeezing tightly as if to squash his thoughts deep into his brain.

Hannah swallowed, staring at him.

“Stop,” Colin said in a strangled tone. “Stop it.”

Hannah lurched backward a little and her calves bumped the boat, which floated another foot or so into the marshy water.

“Stop, stop!” Colin shouted. “Stop, why are you doing this to me?” He pulled his hair with both hands so that the golden blond strands stuck out as if he’d been electrocuted.

Anger combined with fear suddenly welled up in Hannah’s throat. “Why are you doing this
to me
?” she screamed back. “I haven’t done anything!
You
’re the one with something wrong, Colin!”

Colin groaned, still squeezing his head, then leaned over with one hand on a pine tree and vomited in the sand. Hannah gasped. Then Colin looked up. His eyes were blazing like coals. “This is all your fault,” he growled. “Your fault, you stupid bitch.” He took a step toward her. Hannah whirled around and ran past him, leaving the boat floating partially in the water.
Get the keys, get in the truck, and get out of here. And go home
. She pounded up the stairs to the house and grabbed the car keys from the kitchen table. She ran through the living room and out the front door, not stopping to look behind her.

Her feet crunched on the gravel of the yard. She wrenched open the truck door, her heart pounding out of her chest. Colin appeared around the side of the house, his knees crusted with sand, his face white and hollow. The blank look filled his eyes. Her hands shaking, Hannah twisted the key in the ignition and waited for the confident roar of the engine. But nothing came. She twisted the key again. Just a clicking noise. Again. Still nothing. The engine was dead. From the corner of the house, Colin stood silently watching.

Hannah sat in the car for a long moment, hands on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead through the windshield. She was trapped. She licked her lips, slowly opened the door and climbed down.

She stood facing Colin. His form was visible as only a blur topped with the shadowy circle of his face. “The truck’s not fixed,” she finally said.

He didn’t reply. He didn’t move. His hands hung at his side like hams, like pieces of useless meat.

“You said you’d fixed it.”

No reply. He slid his hand into his shorts pocket and pulled out a small gray box, smeared with grease. Hannah recognized it as the thing he’d been yanking at under the car hood and for a moment, she stared at it uncomprehending. Then, with a queer rushing noise in her ears, she looked up into Colin’s blank face. “You deliberately sabotaged the car,” she whispered through dry lips. She was numb, oddly distant, as if she were observing herself from several feet away.

Colin’s face didn’t change. He stared at her.
Through her,
she thought. Her mouth filled with sour saliva. All of a sudden, she turned and ran back up the steps into the house, down the shadowy hallway and into the bedroom. Fingers trembling, she slammed the door, twisting the old-fashioned key lock, then leaned back against the door, panting. The numbness was gone. Now her mind whirled feverishly. He wasn’t well, she’d been wrong. He was sick, oh my God, he was so sick. He’d gone crazy, she realized. With that realization, her breath left her as if she’d been punched. Her boyfriend had gone crazy. Her legs were shaking and she grasped at the edge of the bedside table for support.

She waited for the sound of heavy footsteps, pressing her head close to the door. But the hallway was silent. Slowly, Hannah sank down on the bed. Her knees ached with adrenaline. She had to get out of here, somehow.
There was no truck. Swim across the lake? Way too far. And who even knew what was on the other side?

The room was very quiet. Hannah strained to listen for sounds of Colin in the house, but she heard nothing. Moonlight flooded the window, painting the tumbled white sheets with its glow and reflecting off the uncovered lens of Colin’s camera on the bedside table.

On a sudden hunch, Hannah picked it up and turned it on. She stared at the screen on the back. A picture of the rowboat on the beach, taken from several feet away, at night. The flash lit up the old wood, the faded red and white paint standing out against the ink-black of the lake water. Rain dotted the camera
lens. She forwarded to the next picture. The rowboat again—this time from closer up. And the next. And the next. Hannah pressed the button faster and faster, a sick feeling twisting her stomach. Her hands were cold, clammy. Every picture. Dozens. All at night. All of the rowboat.

Hannah set the camera down next to her on the bed, carefully, as if it might turn into a live snake.
Last night, when he was gone. This is what he was doing. He was out there, photographing the boat, over and over.
Hannah’s chest was tight. It was worse than she’d thought. She didn’t want to know more. She wanted to crawl under the bed and hide until this was all over. But she couldn’t—she couldn’t.
Be strong,
she ordered herself. She gritted her teeth and, summoning her courage, crept to the window and peered out. Twisting her head and pressing her forehead to the glass, she could just make out a sliver of the beach. Colin was out there, sitting on the ground next to the rowboat. He was rocking back and forth, holding his head in his hands. Back and forth. Back and forth. He didn’t stop.

Silently, Hannah withdrew from the window and pressed her back up against the wall, trying to think. Her eyes fell on her cell phone, sitting on the bedside table. That was it. Call for help. She’d call the police or Laurie or someone—anyone to help her and help Colin. A worm of incredulity pushed itself into her mind that this was Colin—
Colin
—and she was about to call the police on him. But she shoved that thought away.

With her heart finally beginning to slow, Hannah grabbed the phone and thumbed the red on button. She waited for
the colorful graphics to roll across the screen. But the screen remained stubbornly dark. She pushed the button again. Nothing. The phone felt oddly light in her hand. She flipped it over and gasped.

The back of the phone gaped like an open mouth. The battery cover was missing, broken off roughly, leaving hard, jagged pieces of plastic. And the battery was gone.

Hannah’s fingers began to tremble. Colin was trying to keep her here. Trap her. Somewhere in his sick mind, he was coolly, methodically scheming to keep her right here, where he wanted her. She carefully set the phone down beside her on the bed. It would be no use to search for the battery. He could have hidden it anywhere.

Hannah reached down beside the bed for her bag, which she usually kept there. But her fingers encountered only bare floorboards and dust. With a sinking heart, she realized her purse was sitting out on the living room couch—right next to the open back door. Colin would surely hear her if she tried to retrieve it. She’d have to leave without it.

She took another quick glance out the window. Colin was still on the beach, still rocking. But when she left the room, she’d lose sight of him. He could stand quietly in the shadows and reach out and grab her as she went by. Hannah shoved that thought firmly from her mind and grasped the cold metal doorknob. She twisted it and pushed the door open. The door creaked. She froze with her heart leaping into her mouth.

But nothing. The hallway stretched before her, endlessly long
and dark. The entrance to the living room was just a shadowy gray square at the end. Flattening herself close to the wall, her breath coming quickly, Hannah stepped out of the room. She crept down the hall. Now she was past the bathroom. Now the child’s room. The door was open a crack, but the inside was like a black cave. The living room entrance loomed ahead of her. Her breath came quicker. The palms of her hands were wet and slippery with sweat.

She stopped at the doorway and peered into the living room. The big room was empty. The gloom pressed at the windows. The furniture sat hunched along the walls.

A faint groaning noise came from the corner and for an instant, her breath choked in her lungs. Then she saw the back door, flapping like a toothless mouth, back and forth in the lonely breeze, groaning each time.

The front door stood ajar on the other side of the room, the screen door still closed. Hannah tiptoed over to it. She hunched her shoulders. Her back felt terribly exposed. Any moment, Colin’s hand could fall on her shoulders. She reached out and laid her hand on the rough wood of the screen door. It would squeak. She knew it would squeak.

She shoved hard, and, without waiting, flew across the porch, down the steps, and across the lawn with her hair streaming behind her—expecting his hands to grab her, yank her back, and throw her to the ground.

The tall, wet grass slapped at her bare legs. The woods loomed as an impenetrable darkness in front of her. She plunged
into the safety of the trees, colliding with the trunks, grasping at the rough bark, and only then did she turn around.

Pine House was faintly lit by the moon. The screen door gaped askew, and for an awful moment, Hannah thought that Colin had ripped it off. Then she realized
she
must have torn it partially from its hinges when she shoved it open. The yard was deserted.

Hannah took a deep, trembling breath, and stepped deeper into the woods. The fleeting thought that Colin had anticipated her and was hiding somewhere among the trees flitted through her mind. Fear threatened to overwhelm her again.
Focus. Stay calm. Stay strong. You need to get out of here, Han
. She had no light. Instinctively, she looked up, searching for the comforting glow of the moon, but black clouds had moved in, blotting it out.

Hannah never imagined such darkness. She could barely see her hand on the end of her arm when she held it out. She took a few steps blindly, until something caught her foot and she tripped, falling heavily against a nearby tree trunk. The rough bark scratched her cheek and something hard dug painfully into her upper thigh. She rubbed the sore spot and her fingers encountered a hard bulge in her jeans pocket.